Gone to the Movies
by Panther Nesmith
Summary: Same Romy angst story as everyone else's, but written by me instead!


Hey All!  
  
The song that inspired this is 'Gone to the Movies' by Semisonic. I put the lyric I used at the bottom.  
  
I own nada.  
  
***  
  
Remy watched Rogue storm out the door. It always started out the same way. One of them would try to say something, but it would come out wrong. The other would jump to conclusions, while the first person got frustrated and stopped trying to explain themselves. Then the screaming would start. Her being able to touch had simply meant they had to be more creative about what to argue about.  
  
Who's fault was it this time? Did it really matter? No, the fact that it had happened was enough for both of them. Remy sighed and sat down on the bed. There was really no other place to sit.   
  
They'd pulled the bed next to the window earlier, before the arguement, so they could sit in the light. The outside streetlights gave off better light than the dim bulbs in the lamps. Not that they'd done a whole lot of _sitting_ in the light then. But the memory was clouded over by the arguement; he couldn't think about how much closer he and Rogue had gotten, just how far apart they were at the time.  
  
Remy looked out the window and saw that it was snowing. It seemed appropriate, although part of him hoped Rogue was at the movies by then, because she hadn't taken a coat, and Canada was really quite cold where they were.   
  
Remy decided that it would serve her right if she froze to death, and watched the snow fall down. It would serve them both right, for wasting time, and acting like strangers instead of lovers.   
  
Everything was quiet in the room, and Remy found himself getting lonesome for noise. One thing about living with large groups of people in a large city; there's always something to take your mind off the mess you're in.  
  
Soon the snow had covered up the bike tracks Rogue had left in the grass next to the motel driveway. Remy thought about following her, juust to see what she did when they were fighting. But if he chased her, she'd never respect him. Beside, she needed time alone too. So he turned his gaze to the road, where the pure white beautiful snow fell down into the pollution and grime and became an ugly greyish color, parts black and white snow.   
  
Why was Rogue at the movies? Honestly Remy didn't know. She always went though. Now that they didn't have twelve different moderators for fights, she had decided to got to the movies everytime she might yell at him. Then she'd come home, explain what she'd thought about, and either apologize or wait for his apology. He had to admitt, she never did have to wait long anymore. He prefered her screaming to her absence.  
  
Remy's thought eventually wound down, and he was lulled into sleep by the gently falling snow. He woke up four hours later, his legs pulled up against his body, leaning against the window glass.   
  
What had woken him was nightmare about. . .something. While he tried to remember he got more and more frustrated, until he realized the answer to his questions. Everything in his life recently was something. He and Rogue had something, they were always somewhere, never anything specific, nothing concrete. He couldn't believe that the answer had been so simple. Right in his face the whole time. When Rogue got back he'd tell her this not quite Buddah revalation, and they'd try to work it out. Maybe. Or maybe he'd forget it and always feel like he was only living life temporarily.  
  
Remy then realized it was dark, and Rogue had been gone five hours. He started to get worried. What if she were lost? What if she'd left? No, he told himself, Rogue wouldn't leave, not after everything they'd been through, everything they were to each other. She knew what they had was deep as well as he did. But the fear persisted, just below eye level. A niggling of not right, unexplained but real.  
  
Remy was broken out of his reverie by a knock at the door. He opened the door expecting to see Rogue with her arms too full to use the key she'd jerked out of his hands along with half of his fingers.  
  
What was there was a policeman. He didn't waste anytime with formality.   
  
"Excuse me sir, does a woman rent this room with you?"  
  
Remy nodded, not knowing what else to do. He'd never expected the cops to find him in a cheap hotel room. And what did Rogue have to do with it? She wouldn't have gone to the police to turn him in, mainly because she understood him, and partly because of a contempt for policemen.  
  
"We think she's been in an accident. If you'll come with us. . ."  
  
"Accident?" Remy repeated, trying to fit the word into his brain. He couldn't exactly remember if it even was a real word or not right that second.  
  
"Yes sir. Was she driving a motorbike?"  
  
Remy's face told the man enough. He nodded. This was the hardest part of his job. "We'll need you to identify her."  
  
"What? Where?" Remy knew on some level what the policeman meant. That Rogue wasn't going to come back. But the part currently holding the reins of his mind didn't want to understand, so it didn't. That part of his mind had to drink the bad news down to the dregs.  
  
"The city morgue. I'm sorry sir. She died before the paramedics could get there."  
  
Remy's mind understood, but denied it to the end. Wasn't she invulnerable after all? But the part that had understood it all from the begining said simply, 'try to charge something. There's your answer.'   
  
Remy rode in the back of the car. He'd never actually been in the back of a policecar, and he focused all his energy on being nervous about that fact. He couldn't help but ask about halfway there, "How did y' know she was wit' me?"  
  
"Her room key. It was a few meters away from her body. Untouched."  
  
The clear part of his mind laughed insanely at the irony. The rest of Remy told it to shut the fuck up before it was eating its own ass. Remy shook his head and became one person again.  
  
Remy couldn't look at Rogue. The romantic in him hoped she looked as beautiful dead as she had alive. No such luck. The morgue people made a point of covering up all but half of her head. The skin left was bruised, but there was still a few whisps of white hair and her bright green eye, wide and glazed. Remy stared at the sight. When he closed his eyes he saw her the way the morgue people had shown her, but in the reverse colors. He felt like the image was tatooed to his eyelids, his mind, his soul.  
  
The funeral was quick and small. Only two days after she'd gone to her last movie. The X-men and the Brotherhood showed up. Remy was the only one not trying to comfort anyone else, or accepting comfort from anyone else. Ororo was the only one to get close to him, and then she had to talk about the plans for the X-treme team, and not anything vaguely Rogue like at all.  
  
He was only at the wake for appearances. He skipped the funeral, opting to sit outside the church and smoke. The music was loud enough for him to hear, so he left to pack his stuff from the hotel.  
  
But then he saw her things. The shampoo still upside down on the cheap shower rack, like she might still finish the bottle. Remy left to get something to eat and drink instead, needing to get away from her memory.  
  
It was dark outside by the time he finished drinking and feeling sorry for himself. He wasn't quite done feeling sorry actually, but he decided to go for a walk anyway, being suddenly very paraniod about drinking and driving.   
  
Not that a drunk driver had killed Rogue. No a trucker, forced to drive too many hours had fallen asleep behind the wheel, and he had gone into the lane Rogue had been in. She had tried, according to the police, to swerve, but was merely hit sideways instead of head on.  
  
Basically, in Remy's mind she was killed by a greedy trucker's boss. The truck, according to the news broadcasts, sustained limited damage. Not that it really mattered one way or the other. If the grill had been smashed into the cab and the trucker died he still wouldn't feel any better.  
  
So, with these thoughts in his head, Remy walked. He found himself, somehow, outside the graveyard where Rogue had been buried. Raven had barely looked at his barely though out funeral and interment plans before she had left to curse God, the world, and everything. He was pretty sure things were bad for her too, and a part of him was glad. Why shouldn't someone else's life be shit now?  
  
Remy hopped the fence and started wandering around the paths next to grassy plots of land. He found the one the man had shown him the day before. He suddenly felt the urge to get some flowers, but knew it was just a delay, and the flowers might go to coax some young stranger into relieving his grief for a little while.  
  
Seeing the headstone was like a cold shower to Remy's senses. He'd opted for a small stone, easier to replace when they found out their mistake. He knew it was for real and for all then. He felt so cruel seeing the marker. It simply said 'Rogue' and her death year He hadn't even known the right birth year. When he'd said what he thought her general age was they'd given up and tried to ask Raven. Apparently she'd been to distraught to think about that sort of thing. The epitaph was some bullshit he'd read in a fortune cookie earlier in the day, that he mindlessly repeated, not knowing what else to put.  
  
Remy bent over to touch it, and suddenly the whole thing was real. Rogue was gone, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. His love, now he could think the words, was laying under his feet. The thought hit him like a small but unexpected shove. He stood up and almost turned to walk away. He stopped just before he took his first step and looked down again.  
  
"'M sorry Rogue. Looks like you did leave me after all." This time when Remy turned around he didn't look back, knowing that if he did he'd see the same thing. It was something concrete at least. Something permanent and lasting in his relatioinship with Rogue. The irony made him want to yell, or cry, or do something, but instead he walked away, to pack up his stuff and leave the dingy motel. He was leaving in the morning, to forget, or at least hope to stop remembering.  
  
[She's gone to the movies now, and she's not comin' back.] 


End file.
